Breathe Again
by claraoswalds
Summary: She was never suited for heroism, but being a villain makes you ragged around the edges in a way that even sweet tea can't heal. - Jade, a character study through her last year in high school.


**Disclaimer: **Nothing you recognize is owned by me.

**Dedicated to: **Mad (chasingafterstarlight) because IT'S HER BIRTHDAY HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAD (granted, it's already the 4th for her, but whatever). I hope it was awesome, and I hope you like this!

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Jade West likes to consider herself an intelligent human being. She's logical, organized, sensible – and yes, she hates most people, but in her honest opinion, there's not much likable about people in the first place. People are cowardly, rude, and superficial, and she doesn't want to try to be likable according to the standards of a society that rewards the cowardly, rude, and superficial with the whole damn world.

She chooses her friends more carefully than most would even imagine – Cat for her innocence, Andre for his kindness, Robbie for his openness, and she chooses her enemies less carefully because her enemies aren't the ones who will visit her grave. But the one thing she has never been able to choose, despite her logic, her intellect, her organization, is her loves.

And maybe that is why, despite everything else, she is as human as the rest of them, no matter how hard she tries not to be.

-:-

It strikes her on a rainy night spent outside in her backyard cutting up the leaves of the maple tree with her new scissors that high school is actually not the be-all, end-all of her entire universe.

She laughs a little, the sound odd in its ringing through the raindrops, because why has it not occurred to her before? She's seventeen, she's got a life, a future, dreams beyond the everyday routine of classes and homework and avoiding Beck's gaze.

She _is_ smart, she knows that, but the simplest things are often remarkably easy to overlook. So she sets the scissors down and looks up into the branches of the maple tree. How long has it been since Beck didn't open the door?

Six months, she reminds herself, but why does the answer come so easily? Why is it always at the forefront of her mind? Why can't she forget the white-hot feeling of disappointment and hurt that coursed through her veins that night? Why can't she stop searching for his gaze in every class they share, hoping against hope that he'll walk towards her and say, _Hey, Jade, I miss you_?

Why does it seem so _important_?

She's Jade West, intelligent, systematic, logical. She _knows_ that high school (Beck and doors and heartbreak) just isn't that important. She's known since long before this night, but it's only just hit her that she hasn't _understood_ what the simple idea of high school just not being that important _means_.

It means she ought to stop worrying about a boy she should have fallen out of love with half a year ago.

And yet, in spite of all the science, all the research, and all her logic, her heartbeat continues to speed up every time he's in the room and her heart itself continues to defy her carefully-reasoned decisions.

She should forget about Beck Oliver, and high school is not and never has been the end of the world.

She is still in love with Beck Oliver, and high school can seem like the end of the world when you're in it.

It's funny how the things the heart has known forever always trump the things the mind has known forever.

-:-

She likes sweet tea. It's not something she often tells people, because it doesn't fit the persona she's crafted so carefully since she understood that the world is harsh and people aren't nice and her parents were never actually in love. She's Jade West, she hates people, and she prefers coffee – black.

But sweet tea is soothing, and sweet tea doesn't remind her of everything bitter in the world, like her mother's old wedding dress and the glass dragon Beck got her for Christmas one year. Sweet tea reminds her instead of the rain twisted through her curls and blowing bubbles in the garden of her grandparents' summer home in south Italy. Sweet tea makes her think of a world that isn't cruel.

She likes to drink sweet tea out on her balcony and watch the million theoretical universes mapped out in the stars, because maybe in one of those realities, she's not Jade West and so maybe she can actually be happy. Perhaps, in another universe, stories are written in a different way and she doesn't have to be the designated villain in the story of Beck Oliver or Tori Vega or Cat Valentine or whomever.

She was never suited for heroism, but being a villain makes you ragged around the edges in a way that even sweet tea can't heal.

-:-

She doesn't _actually_ believe in multiple universes, but Beck used to tease her about that anyway, back when he'd join her on her balcony with fresh-made sweet tea because he actually opened doors for her, once upon a time.

_I thought you didn't believe in anything_, he'd murmur into her hair, his voice just soft enough to make her feel like she belonged here, in this world, on that balcony, in his arms. _I thought you were Miss Science and Logic_.

_I am_, she would insist, because it's true, she doesn't care about fantastical notions like other worlds and destiny and a universe in the stars. Believing is for people like Vega or Cat, not her. Never her. She's not the hero, remember, so she gets to be intelligent.

But still, it's hard to remember calculus formulas and all the scientific theories on how the world came to be when she's wrapped so safely in Beck's arms, watching the stars as they glaze the skies with eternity dancing on light. And it's so _easy_ to believe that maybe she's actually happy and maybe God exists and other worlds exist and maybe there's a happy ending out there for her.

And these days, it's comforting to think that maybe there's another her in another world living another life, a her who doesn't _need_ Beck Oliver and who doesn't cry when he stops opening doors for her.

She's Jade, and she likes to be logical, but even logic has to take a backseat to love at times.

-:-

The worst part is the ache, she decides, walking to lunch one sunny afternoon with what feels like the weight of the world on her shoulder after watching Beck flirt shamelessly with Katie Garlands.

_Are you normally this cute_, and _I can be, if you want me to be_, and his stupid charming grin, and Jade feels like throwing up or breaking down or maybe just falling apart. It's been nine months and the ache is still there.

It aches because it hurts, and she hates that it hurts because that makes it something _important_, and it defies all logic by being important.

She normally hates things which defy logic, but Beck has always (always always _always_) been an exception to _everything_, and she hates him more than anything for still defying her logic.

Some days, she thinks she hates him more for that than for not opening the door.

-:-

Tori is the first, but not the last, to tell her he's not worth it, but Jade has always known that there's no way to properly and logically determine when someone is worth your time and your love except that moment when you wake up and just _realize _that they're not. She's had that moment with a lot of people who had somehow wormed their way into her heart only to leave her in the dust, and Beck Oliver is the one person whom she has never given up on like that.

She's never wanted to, is the problem, and all the science in the world can't explain a phenomenon like Jade West not wanting to give up on someone.

That's not strictly true, of course – she's spent many nights _trying_ to give up on him, trying to forget him, trying to pretend she doesn't care anymore. But she's never succeeded because there's always been that traitorous part of her that's still fifteen and head over heels in love with him.

Falling out of love is never easy, but Jade rims her eyes with black and pretends it is, because it's easier to be logical when you ignore your heart.

-:-

She hates it, but everytime he's in a room with her, she finds herself mapping all the places on his body that only she knows. It's like a secret that lingers in the palm of her hand, clenched tightly to prevent anyone, _everyone_, from every getting a hold of them – of _him_.

Selfish, yes, but she's Jade, and she's always been selfish, especially when it comes to Beck Oliver.

So she watches Katie Garlands flirt shamelessly with him and feels herself breaking apart, but there's still that scar scrawled on his left rib from the time he tried to win a skateboard competition in freshman year and pretty little Katie Garlands doesn't know about that but _Jade does_.

She is still the one who has lain with him in the bed of his RV and traced that scar and all the others and mapped the lines and curves of his body until she had them memorized. She is still the one he whispered secrets to, still the only one who has felt his hands hot across her body, and maybe he buys coffee for Katie now, but Jade is the only person to know _why_ he lives in an RV.

And she walks the halls, boots stomping and hair swinging, and at night, far away from the suffocating confines of Hollywood Arts with its glittering girls and walls lined with heartbreak, she drinks sweet tea on her balcony and imagines a world where she never loved Beck Oliver.

It might be sadder. It might be happier. She supposes she'll never know.

-:-

The night before graduation, she finds Beck Oliver on her balcony and _oh_, her mother let him in, _gee, Beck, that makes it all so much better_. Jade thinks she deserves an Oscar for not setting him on fire, but his eyes are warm and he touches her and it's pathetic but that's all he has to do to get her to stay.

(That's all he's ever had to do, but she's fought tooth and nail for him, kicking and screaming every time she thinks he might leave. Justice is an odd concept, and Jade doesn't think much of it, to be honest.)

Her obnoxious neighbor is playing drums in the garage next door, so it's hard to hear him, but she can read the desire in his eyes even when it's lit only by the streetlights below them and the moon above them. _I want to talk to you_ and _I miss you_ and _I love you_ but why didn't he open the door?

She really needs sweet tea. Instead, she lets him kiss her, and the memories are almost as bittersweet as the sensation of his hands tracing temptation down her back.

He tastes like coffee. She's never hated coffee more in her life.

Yet he murmurs promises he's already broken ten times over against her lips, and somehow his fingers on black chiffon lead to her dress on the floor and his shirt on top of it, and maybe things happen for a reason but Jade doesn't believe in fate.

Tomorrow, they face the future. For tonight, she lets herself drown in her past.

-:-

It's not like life just magically changes after high school. It's not like throwing a stupid cap in the air suddenly turns you into an adult or washes away the memories littered in the halls of your school and in the eyes of your classmates. It's not like you can fall out of love in a day.

She's Jade, and love hurts, so she walks up to Beck on the day they graduate with the future dancing in her heart and _I love you_ and she will always love him but only because beneath the fire and the ice and the world on her shoulders, she is still just a girl.

He says her name like an epiphany, and she almost breaks again. But she is Jade and she is strong, no matter how often she stays up at night replaying all the times when he would look at her like she placed the stars in the heavens.

It takes him a moment, but she can see the spark of realization in his eyes as soon as it occurs. _You're leaving_, and he doesn't just mean to New York for college. Jade takes a breath, and it feels like she could light streetlamps with her smile for the first time in years.

She's never seen him so disarmed before as he stares at her, all puppy-dog eyes and memories of the days they'd willingly given their hearts to each other, but looking at him in his graduation gown with Los Angeles tangled in his limbs, she's more sure than ever of her decision. High school has been her world for four years, and Beck is irrevocably tied to her while she stands here and walks these halls.

But New York is adventure, New York is freedom, and New York is a fresh start. New York is life and living and the whole wide world at her fingertips. Jade likes to consider herself intelligent, detached, indifferent, but even she knows – there's nothing quite like finally accepting that high school is not the end of the world.

It feels like it, sometimes, (all the time). But she presses her lips to his cheek and walks away, and it starts to feel less like the end of the world and more like the end of her past.

The future is scary, and scarier still on the other side of the country away from everything she's ever known and everyone she has ever loved and Beck, _goodbye_.

Jade's never been one to shy away from scary, though. And she's not about to start now.

-:-

Beyond high school lies New York, and here, finally, is _her_ story.

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**A/N: **Please **DON'T **favorite without reviewing, thank you!


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